


Under the Skin

by Batboyblues



Category: Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Dermatillomania, Hurt No Comfort, Other, Self-Harm, kind of but not technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 08:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4953094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batboyblues/pseuds/Batboyblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim's scars are deep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Skin

**Author's Note:**

> So it’s BFRB awareness week (the very last day orz), and your friendly author here personally suffers from dermatillomania. And tbh I wrote this as like a vent fic but I got convinced to post it. So here you go, Tim with excoriation disorder

Tim’s scars run a little bit deeper than the rest of his family. But not for the reasons you might think.

Cuts, scrapes, bruises, the occasional stab wound. All of which are fairly par for the course when you go looking for trouble. That is to say, when you’re a hero and a vigilante, and you go around at night looking for crime to stop. Tim expects to get hurt, prepares for it, and he’d be a fool not to.

But it’s after all the fighting is over that things start to happen. When Tim is resting at home, trying to relax and heal.

It’s never intentional, at least he doesn’t think so. He just doesn’t like his skin to feel uneven. That’s reasonable, right? Everybody wants that. So when he runs his fingers over a healing cut and feels the rough skin around the edges, he scratches, lightly, then harder. Until he’s scratched away the dead skin and the remnants of the scab in the middle. There’s a faint pink line where the new exposed skin is, and Tim feels satisfied

Until he moves on to the next one. 

He’s harsher this time because it was a deeper gash. This one is fresher and hasn’t healed all the way. It bleeds in some spots where the skin hasn’t quite rejoined yet, like a badly sewn seam going across his knee. Tim simply grabs a tissue and wipes the blood away. He feels a strange kind of satisfaction when he does this, like he’s accomplished something, even though all he’s done is further damage his skin. He can’t explain it to anyone and he’s never tried. They probably wouldn’t get it anyway.

Tim can never decide whether or not it’s actually a decision to do this to himself, to pick at his wounds until they’ve reopened and he has to bandage them again. It doesn’t always feel conscious. Sometimes it’s almost like he’s in a trance, hyper focused as he picks at an almost closed knife wound. It’s bruised around the edges and it hurts like fucking hell to put pressure on, let alone open the skin with his finger nails, but he has to. He doesn’t know why he has to though and that bothers him. But if he doesn’t finish, whatever that point happens to be, then he won’t be able to think of anything else.

It’s common for Tim to come away from a “session”, as he calls them, with blood on his fingers and a heavy distaste for himself. Some unnamed kind of peace runs through his veins, almost like endorphins, and he wishes it would stop happening because he knows he doesn’t do this for the pain. He’s sure of it, because he definitely fucking hates the sting of rubbing alcohol in his skin when he cleans up. That doesn’t give him any kind of rush. Neither does the greasy feel of the antibiotic ointment he applies after. He just feels…

Lonely.

He looks at himself in his closet mirror and appraises what he sees. A boy with way too many scars. Some of them are light, no more than discoloured skin now. But they wouldn’t even been there if Tim could just keep his hands off himself.

He hates it. Feels repulsed by his reflection now, so he stops looking it in favour of pulling on clothes. Comfy sweats and a big hoodie, clothes that are easy to hide in. His skin is sore and his muscles ache down to the bone. 

Nothing left to do now but sleep, and hope he can fight the urges tomorrow.


End file.
